Speaker
Description
Excellent particle identification (PID) is one of the key requirements for the central detector of the Electron-Ion collider (EIC). Identification of the hadrons in the final state is important to study how different quark flavors contribute to nucleon properties. A detector with a radial size of only 7-8 cm, which uses the principle of Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light (DIRC), is a very attractive solution to meet these requirements. The R$\&$D program performed by the EIC PID collaboration (eRD14) is focused on developing a high-performance DIRC (hpDIRC) detector that would primarily extend the momentum coverage well beyond the state-of-the-art 3 standard deviations or more separation of $\pi/K$ up to at least 6 GeV/$c$ in the polar angle range $30^{\circ}-145^{\circ}$. Additionally it is expected to provide separation power for p/K up to 10 GeV/$c$, and low momentum e/$\pi$. The key element of the hpDIRC detector is a custom-made 3-layer compound lens used to focus Cherenkov photons produced by charged tracks to small pixel-size photo-sensors leading to measure the position and time of the photons with great precision and finally identify the charged particle. In this talk an overview of the hpDIRC detector development will be presented as an example of wide range of research opportunities during the R$\&$D phase.
